vrijdag 31 mei 2013

LOAD Day 31: Oh no, it's finished!

Yesterday I was so happy that the end was in sight but today I am feeling very sad to realize that this challenge is over. I have really enjoyed getting a little kick under the behind each day to create another page of memories and I am always happy with the layout that I have done. I will now have to do my own butt-kicking again:-)

Today's prompt was a room on the Clue board and it was the billiart or pool room. I went with the POOL and scrapped this week's first proper trip to the little pool because the weather was finally warm and sunny!


This layout will be going to my parents to put on their calendar. I give my parents, mother-in-law and ourselves an 'empty' calendar eacht Christmas and then send out layouts each month to put on it. This is the 3rd year running and it's become a pretty nice memory file.

Today was also the first time I scrapped while listening to some of Lain Ehmann's podcasts and it was really cool to have creative scrapbooking talk going on in the background. Check it out here if you'd like some soothing scrapbook talk:-)

donderdag 30 mei 2013

LOAD Day 30: Yummy layout with bonus recipe!


Today's prompt was the lead pipe which Lain suggested to interpret as a rolling pin so I went with that and decided to scrap what has become 'my' (it's actually Tesco's) success recipe for scones. I found this recipe in a free supermarket magazine and made them in our holiday cottage. They turned out great and I have been making them regularly since, always coming out perfect:-)

Now the original recipe is starting to look a bit battered so I thougth it might be nice to document it in a layout. If you'd like to get this recipe to just leave me a message with your e-mail and I'll be happy to send it to you.

woensdag 29 mei 2013

LOAD Day 25-29

I do my best but I cannot seem to do a layout a day, look after my son and house and still keep this blog up to date so I am doing another batch post:-)

Happy as I am with my stack of produced layouts I am really reaching the point of where I am getting a bit fed up with doing a layout each day and not having much time for anything else. But I am finishing this month because there are some really important realizations. I am starting to get a feel for what is really important and what is doable in the scrapbooking departement of my life. I love scrapbooking but I love spending time with family and friends more. And even when I am scrapping a layout everyday I do not feel like I am making much headway with all the years of pictures I still want to scrap. And these two realizations mean that I have to rethink my scrapping strategy. I do still want to have photo-albums to leave through and I'd love them to be 'pretty'. But I do not have time to scrap every nice picture so I have to be more selective. Next to that I really enjoy getting my artsty side out for the occasional 'WOW' layout with cool techniques and lots of embelishments. So I think I will have to come up with a simpler plan for documenting my and my family's life. More on that later. If you have ideas feel free to share.

For now let's show the layouts of the last 5 days:

Day 25: The prompt was about self-defense and for me to protect myself from going too crazy I need to spend time outside in nature. And I believe we need to be protecting nature, I do my best to pass this on to Thomas as well. My last digi layout so far. It was the day of my birthday party and there was family around pretty much all day plus cleaning and cake baking so a quicky spread in between guests  but I love the colours.


Day 26: Prompt was about the movie Psycho about a scary hotel (as I've been told because I never saw it) so I scrapped about our stay in a deserted hotel in Sweden. I thought I had booked a room in the lovely mansion in the top picture but instead we were the only people staying in the 'baracks' at the back. By 9PM all the staff had gone as well and it was a bit freaky reminding me of 'The Shining'.


Day 27:  Oh no, no prompt today! The link didn't work and nor did the link on the Master Page. I wasn't too fussed actually as I had already decided to go off-prompt today to create a quick layout for my Mother in Law. Each Christmas I give her, my parents and ourselves an empty calendar and I send them a layout for the calendar each month. So this was one much like the one I did in week one, about Queensday. The crown is embossed with gold embossing powder which looks really good in real life but very dull on the picture:-)


Day 28: Today's prompt was just WHERE? I went with last year's holiday destination: I had requested a beach vacation, thinking mediteranean beaches....I got Northumberland beaches: rainy, windy, freezing water and nobody there. Which my husband thought was the greatest thing about the place:-)


Day 29: Today we are with Professor Plum and I scrapped pictures of the appartment I had bought myself right before I met my husband. I got to decorate it just as I liked and that meant many shades of purple everywhere. Love the really dark bedroom wall!


Well people, two more days to go, so proud of myself for still going strong and thankful for a very patient husband:-)



vrijdag 24 mei 2013

LOAD Day 24: Have a nice day!


Today we were in another room on the Clue Board: The Hall. I went with a picture of the inside of our hallway door. When we moved in back in 2008 this was written onto the door and although we originally had plans to remove it or paint over it...it is still there in 2013!

I have embellished with some handmade rosettes I made today. My husband gave me a scoring board (plus idea book) for my birthday this week and I couldn't wait to use it. But I thought there wouldn't be enough time to play around and do a layout....unless I made them for my layout! 

Really love how they turned out. Thanks to the book Score, Fold and Create! and a great tip from Tool School, a 3-part online workshop on how to get more out of your tools, I was able to make these quickly and they are really sturdy! After sticking the ends together use a big dollop of hot glue to push the rosettes into and they will keep their shape perfectly.




LOAD 19-23 Still going strong!

So it's been a bit manic trying to do a layout, upload it to Flickr, give some LOVE (i.e. positive comments on fellow loadster's pictures), keep this blog updated and sleep (and raise a 3 yo, cook, clean, etc...) so I had to here are the layouts for the last week or so.

Day 19: A is for Alibi became a layout voor mijn lieve vriendin Anouk. In the journalling I described her using the remaining 25 letters of alphabet.


Day 20:  The prompt was suspense which I took more in the anticipation direction and made a digital layout about the anticipation I felt that day because it was my birthday the next day. I love all these 'nights before...Christmas, birthday, New Years etc' I'm really still a little kid:-)


Day 21: The prompt was just 'WHAT?' so I went with this picture of my brother and me back in the seventies playing with.....a casette deck! 'A what?'

Day 22: Miss Scarlet! Well I took it in the direction of the colour red but really I am not that fond of the colour red. So I started thinking about what red things I do like. One red think I really like are poppies! But I hardly had any good shots of red poppies, I had plenty good shots of fuchsia and soft powdery pink poppies.... So I had to work with this Drive-by shot made on vacation in Northunberland last year. These poppies were huge, bigger than my hand. I made the embellishments from some white die cuts I had received in a swap a while ago. I had a lot of fun personalizing them with inks. 


Day 23: Another digi-layout from our trip to Maastricht this month. The prompt was 'Candlestick' and I went with these shots of all the candles in the basilica of Our Dear Lady in Maastricht. I had so much fun putting the background paper together with all the digistamps and borders. Loved being able to adjust the title to match the colours on my layout. I can do an art journal style without all the mess:-) 





donderdag 16 mei 2013

LOAD Day 16: A brother and his tools and a sister using hers...

The prompt for Day 16 was a wrench, a tool used in plumbing if I'm right;-) It made me think about this picture I had of my brother cutting my bike loose after I had lost the keys to the lock... I had wanted to scrap this picture for a while and this was my chance. I took the prompt to tell about how I call on my brother whenever I need any tool bigger than a hammer or a screw driver. And he pretty much always delivers: huge hammers, tree cutters, brick laying equipment. You name it, he's got it or he can get it somewhere. And...he'll help me use it or do it for me. What a brother!

The other part of this layout is that I have used my tool (heat gun) for the second time since I got it last year. I used it to emboss the  cogs in gold (it doesn't show on this picture but believe me it looks pretty cool:-) and I was really happy about that. 

And to help me use my other tools more often I have just purchased Jennifer Gallagher's Tools School mini workshop (video). Looking forward to checking that out!

woensdag 15 mei 2013

LOAD Day 15: Strutting my stuff: oh yes, that is all gold that glitters!

I am happy, oh so happy! I love this layout for so many reasons: the pictures of my crazy new trousers and gold glittery booties: the black and white journalling card, the glittery title and the glittery embellishments. But most of all I love the background that I made myself with a honeycomb stencil and different colours of distress ink. It matches the pixel shapes on my trousers.

This story is kind of a follow up of my first layout this year about wanting to get my Mojo back. Cool, happy coloured clothing and being crafty and creative are two of the ways I am working on this and it is really working!

LOAD is such an inspirational challenge. I am seeing so many beautiful and original layouts it's difficult not to be affected. One of my favourites is http://www.peonyandparakeet.com/blog/ by Päivi Eerola, she makes the most amazing background papers herself. Expect to see a bit of her in some of my future layouts:-)

dinsdag 14 mei 2013

LOAD Day 14: Who? Karen!

Day 14 of LOAD, I have made it through two whole weeks. I am tired and proud. Today I was back to scrapping with paper and I really enjoyed it. I had totally forgotten about this paper I had found in a discount bin a while ago but with its bit of sparkle it really matched the picture of me and my American friend Karen. We met on exchange in Sweden a long time ago and we were instant friends spending pretty much every day together. When I went back home to The Netherlands and she went back to the US it was heartbreaking but we did our best to see each other when we could. We don't get to see each other nearly as much as we'd like but with a bit of luck we'll be seeing each other again this year.

Today's prompt was just 'WHO?' and I decided to scrap about how much I miss her and how much I am looking forward to seeing her. The picture is from 1997, the story is from the now, love the combination.

maandag 13 mei 2013

LOAD Day 13 - Typically Thomas


I didn't realize that I hadn't put this one up yet. It's my layout for Day 13 when the prompts was 'Modus Operandi' which roughly means 'The way things are done' so, inspired by Melissan Shanhun of http://www.digitalscrapbookinghq.com/blog/ who does Monthly Baby Reports of her second son I decided to do some pictures of typical things that Thomas does at 3,5. I used a standard Photoshop Elements template that I stretched to Scrapbook size. Really happy with this.

LOAD Day 12: Gangnam Style!


Well, this layout almost didn't get done on time. On top of our busy day (leaving our holiday home, including cleaning it and doing a Thomas the Tank Engine day at the Dutch Railway Museum) I got ill yesterday. Part exhaustion, part food poisoning I think. I had started on my layout in the car on the way to the museum and that meant that by the time we got home and I was feeling pretty bad I only had the background and title to do.

The prompt was the movie 'The Usual Suspects'. I had to do a bit of searching before I came up with this. Had I been home where I have all my photos on an external harddrive then it would have been easy but I had to make do with what was on my laptop: 6 months of pictures only:-) So I was browsing through my pictures as we were zooming over the A2 from Maastricht to Utrecht. Finally (I only had limited battery power) I came across these pictures of my son Thomas (l) and his friend Rayan dancing and singing along to the Gangnam Style video on YouTube. With their sun glasses on they look a bit like little gangsters so I thought that would fit the prompt well enough.

I really wanted to add some neon to the pictures as there is also a lot of it in the video. But getting the neon on the different elements wasn't as straightforward as I thought. I am only just getting to know Photoshop Elements so there was a lot of trial and error involved and I am still not sure I did it right but it works for now. This is also the first time I used a black background. I tried many different patterned backgrounds before I came up with the black last night. I think it works really well.




zaterdag 11 mei 2013

LOAD Day 11: Lust for Life!


Wooohooo, I've made it one third into the month: 11 layouts in 11 days. I am very pleased with this result. No guarantees for the future though, tomorrow will be a challenge. We are leaving our vacation address early (some cleaning required) and then we are off to the Thomas the Tank Engine weekend in Utrecht. This should be great fun for Thomas but a bit tiring for mummy and daddy.  We'll be home around dinner time and will have to do some unpacking etc. I am going to attampt to do my layout in the car on the way to Utrecht. I love getting this job out of the way as early in my day as possible. It means I get some proper nights sleep and that is really important if you're trying to raise a young boy;-)

As you can see on the layout our little man (the one in the blue top) loves to rough and tumble! Pictures were taken yesterday while we were visiting friends with their kids on a campsite close to our vacation address. Because I am digiscrapping for this vacation I can just use the pics I take immediately. At any size I like, that's pretty cool. I get so much inspiration from the digi kits as well. I would really like to recreate in 'paper'  that star embellishment with all the bits of ribbon behind it. But for now I went with customizing the original digital embellishment with some alphas (letters) from three different kits by Happy to Create: Awesome Life, Awesome Kid and Action Hero. I really enjoyed trying some more embellishments but all in all it's still a very simple layout, just the way I like it.

Before I forget: Today's prompt was 'Lust' and I went with Lust for Life as these three boys are just having a blast making the most of life. 

vrijdag 10 mei 2013

Load day 10: We're in the Library

With hubby sleeping in and Thomas happily playing with all the toys in our holiday swap home i had time in the morning to do today's layout. So I am free for the rest of the day and evening:-)

Today we are in the Library and I did a layout about a bookshop in a church in Maastricht. We came upon it yesterday and I just had to take a picture and have a browse. It even had a coffee bar in the back, how cool is that?

This is another digital layout. I use bits and pieces from two Happy to Create kits: Awesome Kid and Awesome Life.

The Awesome Life Kit can be downloaded for free at Happy to Create!

donderdag 9 mei 2013

Load Day 9: Water guns and big noises!


Using the really cool Action Hero Digikit by happytocreate.com I created another page about Queensday. With the prompt being about Shooting I thought they would go well with the pictures I took of us with the water guns and making lots of banging noises at the Magic Wand making workshop. I think I will be using this kit again, it suits little boys really well:-)

LOAD Day 8: Canon shots and really fast scrapping


I was wondering if day 8 might be the day I would be skipping because today we were about to go on a long weekend away. And as we were swapping house I spent most of the day washing, cleaning and packing. When all that was done and I had a little bit of time left I decided to check out the prompt and it was Colonel Mustard. Lain suggested, among other things, to scrap an army or navy themed page. And that was all I needed to scrap the fastest page ever, under 30 minutes, including painting the crown gold!

I did the journalling in a Word document and then wondered if I could turn it into our flag by adding blue and red background colouring above and below it. It worked. Printed it out, cut photos to size, paint crown gold and add everything to the orange background paper to reflect our royal family being from the House of Orange.

The pictures are from the morning of our last Queensday. Our Queen Beatrix abdicated that morning and in the afternoon her son Willem Alexander was installed as our new King. It was a day filled with festivities and rituals. One of them being a Dutch navy fregat sailing up the IJ (river like body of water on the edge of Amsterdam) firing off 101 canon shots. All very exciting. Having my son, husband and my best friend with her 3 kids (bottom right) there made it even better.

Now I am not sure what the next few days will bring where LOAD is concerned. We are away with our little family of three and I want to enjoy my time away so I wonder if the scrapping will happen. We'll see.


dinsdag 7 mei 2013

Day 7 of LOAD: Why don't I just go to bed?


Just a quicky post of today's layout. I am really tired and when today's prompt was just 'WHY?' I knew decided to scrap something very current my lack of sleep because of this challenge:-) The journalling says it all:


The journalling card is from Jenn Wright Design, everything else is from a free kit by Suzy Q Scraps. I am really enjoying my digi scrapping.

maandag 6 mei 2013

LOAD Day 6 - Red Herring and starting to loose sleep!


Today's prompt was about terminology: A Red Herring is giving our misleading clues in a mystery story.

I have taken the prompt in a rather different direction. In my mother tongue of Dutch to give somebody a misleading clue or idea is called 'to put someone on the wrong leg' (it sounds better in Dutch...) and I then arrived at the the following event of my son wearing two different shoes. 

The journalling reads: At the beginning of 2013 I had started to let Thomas choose the clothes and shoes he wants to wear. There would always be a choice of two. When it came to his shoes I asked him if he'd like to wear his brown boots or his blue sneakers. He cheekily answered: 'Both!' And so it was that he went to school with two different shoes. To his credit he never complained once and now regularly ask to wear two different shoes. My mother adviced me to change up the left and right shoes of each pair so as not to wear one of then down much more than the other. Good advice!

Today and yesterday were tough days. Lots going on during the day so scrapping is postponed to the evening and with uploading to Flickr, Facebook, Scrapfever forum and this blog I going to bed far too late. Really feeling it today, keep wanting to close my eyes and lie down. Better get to bed now. 

zondag 5 mei 2013

LOAD Day 5: And then there were none


Day 5 on LOAD was a difficult one. It's been a fun but long and tyring day and I didn't get around to scrapping this layout until about 10 pm. Also it was a rather sad story I wanted to scrap today. The prompt for Sunday is a suspense novel or movie and today's was 'And then there were none' by Agatha Christie.

Last year my grandmother died at 96. We were sad but she had lived a full and happy life. She was the last one of my grandparents and it really hit home that the generations had shifted up a level. My mom and dad are now the grandparents, my brother, sister and myself are the parents and our children are the youngest generation.
The layout is simple as I wanted to get a lot of journalling and a poem by Dutch pastor Marinus van den Berg in. It reads something like this:
Greetings
by Marinus van den Berg
Original poem is in Dutch, this is my own translation.
Greetings with light
now that your life candle has burnt up.
Greetings with light
from us who cared about you.
Greetings with light
now that we remember your light.
Greetings with light
now that we thank you
for the light that you have brought.
Greeting with light
now that you have left the light of life.
Greetings with light
that there may be light for you
until the end.
----
I knew it had to be on the one sheet of sunny Bo Bunny paper I had to reflect the light that the poem speaks of. I only just saw that it's called 'The gift of love', how about that?

zaterdag 4 mei 2013

LOAD Day 4: Greed and all that love form the LOAD sisters


Saturdays are Murder Motives and today's is Greed. Well there can only be one set of pictures scrapped for this one: Thomas and his spaghetti! There's just never enough of it and he eats it without coming up for air:-) I had a bit of trouble printing out the photostrip at the bottom but thankfully it worked out in the end.

I have already uploaded my layout to the Flickr gallery and then I go and check out other people's layouts and leave some LOVE. Everyone will try and leave some positive comments for about ten other LOAD sisters that have posted before them and it is so encouraging and wonderful. I hadn't thought of that when I started and it is a lovely surprise.



vrijdag 3 mei 2013

LOAD Day 3: What's cooking Hot Stuff - a digi layout


Friday's we are in a room on the Clue board and today we are in the kitchen so think cooking, food, recipes and kitchen make-overs. I immediately knew I wanted to scrap the pictures of Chris' brewing. But I hadn't printed out any of the photos I had been taking over the years. So I decided to try my hand at a digi layout using a cd and book by Helen Bradley: Scrapbooking. The elements were all a bit dated but this background I found looks a lot like the ground barley flakes and oats that go into the brewing pots. 



I had only ever done one digi layout years ago when I got the book and that was just following the exact steps in the book. The book works with Photoshop Elements which I have but hardly use so it was great to be able to work with it. It wasn't easy though but faster than printing out all those pictures. I have a very 'sensitive' printer. I am most proud of being able to put shadows arond my pictures and other elements so it has a bit of dimension. And it is great to be able to just resize your photos and elements to your heart's desire. But I am anxious to get back to my patterned papers and embellishments:-)

Have you tried digi scrapping yet? What do you think?

donderdag 2 mei 2013

LOAD Day 2: Taking a stab at something new


Thursday on LOAD 513 are about weapons and today's clue is 'Taking a stab at it'. You could literally run a knife over your layout or pierce some holes. I took the more symbolic meaning of trying something new and scrapped some pictures of a vintage layout workshop I did at Essies in Almere:


For this layout I kept it a bit more toned down than the one I did in the workshop: tearing, distressing and inking the edges with Walnut stain. The font is Calligraph421 BT, I really like it. And I already know I will use it again in the future because there is a Pirate layout waiting to be made:-)

So, what new thing would you still like to 'take a stab' at? Still on the do-I-dare list is sewing on the page. I really dread my machine playing up and it all becoming one big tangled up mess. But I already know I will do it, I can try anything!



woensdag 1 mei 2013

LOAD DAY 1: Mrs. White is in the house


Well, I made it and very much on time:-)

Today's prompt was 'Mrs. White is in the house'. Mrs. White is the servant in the mystery game of Clue (Cluedo in most countries). You could interpret it any way you like: leaving lots of white space, doing an all white page etc. etc. Quite a few people went with a snowy christmasy theme. Can you believe that never even entered my mind? After so many months of cold and snow here in The Netherlands I am very much done with snow!

I really triggered on the 'house' bit in the prompt and remembered how, when we moved into our home 5 years ago, we painted over the purple and green walls of our living room with a soft white. It felt so good to paint away the old colours and start fresh. Of course, 5 years on I really want to add some colour to our 'natural' colour scheme of whites, coffee, honey and chocolate but that's a different story.

I was dying to use my new Distress paint dabbers and thought it would be cool to do some painting on the page. Finding some cardstock in exactly the same colours as the ones we painted over was a big bonus. Now all this messy painting isn't really me but I really enjoyed it. I couldn't help myself though when it came to the journalling and printed out the text. Cutting them out in neat little strips and attaching them very carefully:-)

I also went outside my comfort zone with the kind of photos I used. These are, in my view, a bit boring. Ugly even and I prefer to scrap catchy or pretty photos. This challenge is already pushing my boundaries in a good way.

I got my layout done in between daily chores: whenever I got an idea I just went and did it straight away. Find the photos (not so easy, they were in boxes hidden in the back of a closet), pull out some card stock, paint, paint some more, paint with stencil, type out journalling, print, cut, stamp title and then added some embellishments as it was feeling a bit flat:-) Because I was on a deadline most of my perfectionism got pushed to the side: no time for better ideas, just keep going!

I'd love to hear what you think and what you would have done with this prompt. Thanks for stopping by!